“I see that.”
“I look at a case, work up a profile, but then I send that off. I’m hardly ever in the field. I’m very rarely involved in an active investigation. And if I’m gone, it’s to consult in a police station conference room or give a lecture.”
“Right.”
“So like I said, maybe.”
“Perhaps you should be sheriff,” I said quietly.
“Harry’s a good man, and he’s waited a long time. It’s his turn.”
I nodded.
He came to stand between my legs and put his hands to my thighs.
“It’s not the first time I’ve had it, and the feeling fades, babe.”
“Okay.”
“We’re clear for Christmas.”
“Okay, Cade.”
“I love you.”
I blinked.
My heart rejoiced.
My mind reconjured images of family in houses all around us on the lake.
Then I wrapped my arms around his shoulders.
“Okay to that most of all, scarecrow.”
Those beautiful lips in that thick, dark beard formed a smile.
And he kissed me.
Fifty-Five
Balls
The day Tony Romano burned himself to death in a cabin outside Ash Peak, David was taken out of the ICU.
When I visited him the next day, he looked at me.
And then he apologized that there was going to be a delay in finishing the powder room.
And yes, if the name Tony sounded familiar, that’s because it was.
And not because it’s a common name.
No, it was because, when Megan took the lectern in the chambers during the big town meeting, she’d thanked the man at the front who’d stepped aside for her.
His name was Tony.
It was that Tony.
He’d been first up to say something to the council and commissioners about Sheriff Dern.
Yes.
He had balls that big.
And now…
He was dead.
Fifty-Six
The Picture
I had a lot on my mind.
Christmas had come and gone, New Year’s had come and gone, with Camille and Joan doing duty to Joan’s family for the first holiday but flying up to ring in the new year with us.
Jess had been disappointed at the plethora of presents I’d laid on him, sitting among the new jeans and flannels and top-of-the-line, solar powered, tactical GPS watch, complaining, “You’re loaded, you couldn’t buy me a Humvee?”
(He, of course, had been kidding and that was his alpha-man way of expressing gratitude. Or, at least, that was how I decided to read it.)
Celeste, on the other hand, had not hidden in the slightest that she’d been delighted.
She now had her own Chloe.
And Givenchy padlock ankle boots.
And…other.
Lots of other.
Bohannan had grumbled, “We definitely should have talked budget.”
But he didn’t mean it.
I knew this because he bought me a heavy gold charm bracelet that had six identical charms on it. They were all stars. Each had a little diamond. And each had a letter.
F. C. B. J. J. C.
So I guessed I did have my own tribe, my own family, a true home where I belonged, and if I ever doubted, I just had to look at my wrist.
I loved that he made himself the B.
I also started bawling.
“Estrogen always mucks up the works,” Jace complained as his father held me and stroked my back. “She carries on like this for long, we’re never gonna get through the thousand presents she bought each of us.”
“Like you’re not taking notes for when you get your own babe,” Celeste retorted.
“I am,” Jace concurred. “Find myself a woman who makes good cupcakes.”
At that, I pulled loose of Bohannan’s embrace (not entirely, obviously), and informed him, “You’re cooking for the next three months.”
“Works for me,” he replied. “I rock in the kitchen.”
Since I had Christmas dinner all planned, it would take until the next night to find out that he didn’t lie.
And since Bohannan clasped it on me Christmas morning, I hadn’t taken that bracelet off.
No, that wasn’t the “a lot” I had on my mind.
Part of that lot was what happened late that very morning when Bohannan showed in the door to my office at my house.
I didn’t move back there.
In fact, I was fully moved into The Big House, clothes, books, Emmys and everything. I’d listed my home in the Hollywood Hills. And Bohannan and I were planning to take a springtime vacation to Paris.
Not to mention, just the week before, Bohannan had approached me with the news that Jess and Jace were feeling it was time to take the next step through adulthood.
That being making their own space.
Jace wanted to move up to the log cabin. And Jess wanted to know if he could rent my house from me.
When we’d had a family meeting about this, Celeste was all in because, “The boys’ house is rad. Or it will be, after an industrial cleaning. And I can move in there when I graduate!”
Even though I didn’t go test out this theory, from her words I knew I was correct about the whole, that-house-smelling-like-a-used-sock thing.
Considering the fact that, during New Year’s, Joan had waxed whimsical about how it would be great to get out of the LA traffic and move up to Washington (and away from her mother), and how nice that big house looked up on the hill, visions of my fantasy coming true danced in my head.